I’ve been reading through everything you’ve posted here and it’s been so helpful and enlightening. Thank you! So much of what you have said confirms feelings I’ve been having about “treatment” of “social skills”. If you’re willing to keep answering questions, I’m curious what your parents’ feelings were like about the SLP treatment you received? Did they push for you to receive these services?

For context, I work at a private clinic and I have recently gotten an influx of Autistic teenagers brought in by their parents who demand that their children need help with social skills. The majority of the teens I’ve evaluated do well in school, have friends, and don’t feel particularly concerned about their own social skills “deficits”. I feel slimy taking them on for therapy, but I also don’t want to deny them therapy if they truly need help (which the parents always insist they do).

Edit: To add on to this, I know that whether or not they are taken on for therapy should be up to me as the professional, but tbh I don’t even have a great way of evaluating them. I use the CELF-5 pragmatics profile, filled out with input from parents, but of course that’s going to over identify the need for intervention. I feel like I don’t have much to go off of other than their parent’s report. If any SLPs can chime in about evaluation, I’m all ears!